


False Life

by somnivagrantTraviatus



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21702235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somnivagrantTraviatus/pseuds/somnivagrantTraviatus
Summary: The first Grimm, and how he came to be a vessel of the Nightmare Heart.
Relationships: Grimm & The Nightmare Heart
Kudos: 33





	False Life

**Author's Note:**

> In my headcanon 'verse, Grimm and the NH are pretty close, but they got off to a rocky start. It took a long time for them to figure out an acceptable compromise for how they should work together.
> 
> How they met probably didn't help.

He died in fire.

Ash and corpses littered the ground, the creaks and cracks of crumbling domicile indistinguishable from bubbling chitin. Others’. And his own.

Pain boiled him from the inside out. But that was nothing compared to the fear scuttling, spider-legged, over every plate of his back. Terror shrieked and fluttered like bats in his throat. Near-senseless, he opened his mouth to let them out, but all that came was a hacking rasp of smoke. Like the fear, it curled and stung his eyes.

He didn't want to die.

Another shudder wracked him, and he choked, gagging around black smoke and bile. Gods, please. _He didn't want to die._

A burning touch against his chest, hot enough to cool the caustic air. **INTERESTING.**

He nearly sobbed. “Please.”

**ONE SO FULL OF FEAR… YES, I CAN GIVE YOU WHAT YOU ASK.**

“Please,” he choked.

**IT WILL HURT.**

The world grew dark at the edges. “Please.”

**I WILL RESHAPE YOU AS I WISH. YOU SHALL BE MY VESSEL, AND ACT IN ACCORDANCE WITH MY WILL. DO YOU AGREE TO THIS?**

“Please!”

**VERY WELL. I NAME YOUM͡҉̪̗͇͎̩͕̳ ̵̣ͅI̢̘̗̦͜ ̸̶̣̭̟N̶̰͇̠̱͖ ̲͖̪͙Ę̨̠͎.**

The word reverberated in his consciousness and rang throughout his limbs, meeting his blood and doubling, tripling the heat running through him til the hiss of his boiling body became a roar. White-hot agony rearranged him in crackling groans. His thorax, his abdomen, his tarsi melted into alien shapes and strange configurations. His fingers stretched and lengthened into talons. Through it all, the fear pulsed within him like a second heart.

When the world focused again, he was on his back and panting in the wreckage of a ruined shell. His shell. Too small and smoking at the edges, where something – he – had burst through.

Hysteria bubbled in his chest, became a coughing fit. He had always feared – _wanted_ – to become someone new. It was a grim joke. 

But he was alive to tell it.

His cast-off shell crunched under his hands. Grimm levered himself upright, picked a direction, and stumbled away, leaving the ashes of his old life swirling behind him.


End file.
